Obama to eliminate half of US government web sites, including the USFS’ “Fiddlin’ Foresters”

Who KNEW the U.S. Forest Service maintained a web site for an old-time string band made up of USFS employees. If you never had the pleasure (?) of visiting the Fiddlin’ Foresters web site, well, you never will, because it’s history. It was highlighted by President Obama in a video about cutting waste, and now it does not exist. The site was HERE, now it’s gone. And THIS is what it used to look like, thanks to the Waybackmachine.

The President said “I’ll put their music on my iPod, but I’m not paying for their web site”.

This is a historical screen grab of the Fiddlin' Foresters web site, captured at the WayBackMachine web site.

As one of the campaign’s first steps, the Administration will be targeting duplication and waste among federal websites. There are almost 2,000 separate websites across the Federal Government. With so many separate sites, Americans often do not know where to turn for information. The Administration will immediately put a halt to the creation of new websites. The Administration will also shutdown or consolidate 25% of the 2000 sites over the next few months and set a goal of cutting the number of separate, stand alone sites in half over the next year.

In the video below, the part about the USFS’ Fiddlin’ Foresters begins at about 1:35.

Gotta agree with Emmett Bill, one thing to bring up the political in the course of a discussion of policy or its implications, but BFD is clearly looking to grind a pulaski for some reason, perhaps they could be encouraged to come back when they have some thing substantive to say about wildland fire. Or on the other hand perhaps they are a REALLY big fan of The Fiddlin’ Foresters.

Keep up the good work Bill, you’re doing a good job of suffering the few fools that show up here on occasion. Oh, and let us know when you get those satelites that are causing sea level rise tracked down!

The Fiddlers made citizens smile. Can any other boast of that? Think of the money saved on psychiatric visits because depression was relieved by a simple, yet conservation minded, website made people smile. Bring them back!

If you look at any number of web hosts, you can find hosting for as little as $5/month. My favorite amongst hosts, is Bluehost, you’ll find them at http://www.bluehost.com where they will pick up the tab for the domain name for as long you are hosted there. (Otherwise costs you about $9 – $10/year.) The biggest problem at this point would be finding out who in the US Government has control of the domain, and having it transferred to private ownership. Otherwise it will snatched up by someone who buys and sells domains, and you will pay out the wazzooo to try and get it back.